Once again, if you can buy it, you can DIY it. Intstuctables.com user Jerbearisapimp9 (apparently there were eight other “jerbearisapimps”) has seven pages of instructions on how to make your own foldable skateboard. His method involves scavenging something called a BOA lace system from some snowboard boots (or golf shoes). The BOA system replaces shoelaces with a loop of stainless steel wire and a locking pulley in a plastic housing. Basically, you spin a dial to tighten your shoes. It’s incremented so you can theoretically achieve the same settings all the time if you don’t take into account the shoe stretching out. Jerbearisapimp9‘s foldable skateboard uses the BOA system leveraged against the trucks to to keep the board tips on tight. It’s a creative but not very elegant solution that seems like it would be very time consuming since there is threading involved every time you want to disassemble or reassemble the board. But hey, he did it himself, and so can you if you want to. Surprisingly, the ready made alternative Port-a-board is actually still in business though.

Jerbearisapimp9 makes excuses for his ghetto briefcase, but it adds a certain amount of sophistication to his setup. Everyone should show up at a session with a briefcase if they mean business. Check out the Foldable skateboard, BOA.

I’ve been watching Fuel TV more and more lately. I have the DVR set up to pick up “skateboard” in the title and descriptions, that way I don’t have to sift through all the extraneous wakeboarding, motocross, BMX and snowboard programing. I’ve blown it off for a couple years because I figured it would all be watered down X-Games drivel that I just don’t want to sit through. There is still a little bit of that in their skateboard programming, but for the most part it seems like they are in tune or at least sympathetic with the “lifestyle,” as if someone in programing actually skates. It’s mostly street oriented but they do throw in the tranny and vert occasionally. In general they have a respect for the history of skateboarding, meaning they don’t offhandedly dismiss everything that happened over two years ago. It’s not perfect by any means though, but surely acceptable for a daily dose of skateboarding on your TV. Of course, these are probably the “good old days” of Fuel TV, akin to when MTV started and used to actually play music videos. In five years Fuel TV could end up being a hugely popular channel full of reality based crap aimed at teenagers, 24-7 that years’ Ryan Sheckler and his posse shows.

Right. So this an entertaining clip called Switchstance that examines the perils of choosing a life of skateboarding. Originally pointed out by someone as a comment in an unrelated post, it turns out by someone who gets paid in some capacity by Fuel TV. Whether it was comment spam or not is irrelevant because it’s a good clip, and I was trying to figure out a meaningful way to talk about skateboarding on Fuel TV anyway. Check it out after the jump.

Dan Hughes has posted up a story about a recent skate everything tour some of our Seattle area brothers attempted. It was inspired by the Buy Nothing – Skate Everything Day adventure.

I saw half of a 40 spots in 40 hours attempt on Fuel TV last night.

There’s a DIY solution for LED skateboards, but with these types of projects, it’s usually faster to pay someone else to do it for you. Enter Photon Light Boards. You may need to get out your Tron suit for these.

[Source: Gizmodo]

If you want light LED skateboard wheels without all the effort of making them yourself you can always go the store bought route. Availabel in red, blue and poo-brown! That guy in the middle has the Delorean Motors back-to-the-future skateboard wheels. Bonus (?) LED riser pads after the jump.

This is Cookie phot of BJ is from a Minnesota DIY spot, sent in by William Morrill.

Whats up dudes, just contributing a photo of a front hurricane @ a spot me my friends made in Minnesota. Its a fun quarter with some vert and hand made pool cope. You can drink beers and sk8 all day there with no hassles..

Beer? Skateboarding? No hassles? Sounds horrible! William’s got time to send in pictures because that spot is probably under three feet of snow right now. Check out the uncropped version.

Aumsville’s skatepark reopened the day I posted the story about it being closed, after being closed for about a month. I spoke with City administrator Maryann Hills this morning, who confirmed that the park had been reopened with the same rules as before, which means lights go out at midnight. Mrs Hill cited vandalism in the bathroom and an assault at the park as the specific reasons why the park was shut down. There is some sort of security camera present, although she was reluctant to give out the details. However, when I asked if it was internet enabled so skaters could use it to check rain conditions, she said it was not currently, but went on to described somewhat passive plans to add that in the future if someone would basically take care of it all for them. Checking up on Tasha’s information from a few days earlier, Mrs Hill mentioned that a precondition to reopening the park was information being given to the police for pressing charges against an individual or individuals. She assumed an arrest or some sort of cooperation had taken place since the park had re-opened. She also reiterated that the park will close again if there are further incidents. The phone call ended on a happy note when Mrs Hill very pleasantly told me to have fun skating. The photo of Danimal above is from the same 2004 night session that the picture of Damien was taken.

These are dark times for Aumsville skaters.

Hey Kilwag, where’s the coverage of Aumsville’s recent closure? SOMEONE NEEDS TO GET SOME SHOTS OF THE FENCE around the park and all the signs up. It says Aumsville is closed indefinitely!!! Those little wanna-be gang banger chumps got that place closed. That place has the shittiest locals of all time. The park is a true Oregon original.

Tasha from Aumsville City Hall said the skatepark was closed due repeated vandalism, including setting fire to the bathrooms and clogging the toilets. They also had problems with people sleeping in the bathrooms as well. (Here’s a tip: If you need to sleep in a public the bathroom, don’t try to burn it down…) Maintenance, repair costs and general aggravation got to be too much so they shut it down indefinitely. Tasha was just the gal who answered the phone, but she said they were hoping someone would call the police with a tip so they could find the guilty parties. She mentioned a plan for video cameras on the site, but she wasn’t sure if the park would reopen until after they make arrests. Aumsville is a pretty small town, and the cops are pretty heavy handed there in my past experience. If the problem was so recurring, how hard could it have been for them to catch someone in the act? Locals, are you gonna let those kooks get away with ruining your scene? It’s too small for you not to know who it is. You guys made your own bed, now you have to sleep in it – even if it is in the bathroom you are trying to set on fire.

The official city administrator was out of the office today. I’ll try and follow up on Monday. If anyone could send in a picture, we’d appreciate it. This shot is from October of 2004.

Here’s a still from the music video for the 2003 track Heartbeats from the Swedish band The Knife. It’s got some vintage skateboarding footage, about 15 seconds or so looped repeatedly. Those kids in the striped shirts look kind of cool going downhill together. I thought they might be up to some editing trickery at first.

[Source: Drawer B]

Man, getting hacked and a having to essentially take 24 hours off from the web site due to work (real job in the real world) really set me back here. I feel like I lost this whole week. This week’s very, very late Shot of the Week comes from Dylan Davies. It’s Warren Jones doing a backside flip over a the seven set at the Vancouver Plaza in Vancouver BC. Check it out.